The unintended learnings.
My familiarity with design thinking happened earlier in my career as I participated in design sprints before and after the start of Alberta’s 2014 recession. At the heart of each sprint was our end-user experience but the company’s ideas shifted from how to make our product a more luxurious experience to how to generate new product lines geared away from the oil and gas sector. These experiences taught me the basics of the non-linear design process and the speed at which you can generate new prototypes to test in the market. At the start of the Design Thinking course, I believed I had an understanding of the concepts and I hoped to learn how to facilitate the process. Kris’ course provided me with some key takeaway concepts and some open-ended questions I am even more curious about.
The Design Thinking course expanded my perspective and provided alternative perspectives on key concepts to building human-centered design. As a marketer, it is paramount to know who your end-user is and how the product/service can better their experience. In the same breath, marketers have a lot of curiosity to learn about other demographics and if the product/service you’re selling could fit their needs too. The big perspective shift from design thinking to marketing for me was your not trying to market a product/service to a new demographic rather your building a new product/service for that specific demographic. It forces you to make a new circle that fits a circle size hole rather than trying to gently nudge a square into the circle sized hole. So now I have a better appreciation of the creativity and vision required in design thinking and the connection needed with end-users.
Understanding the end-user guides really human-centered design but I felt there was a gap until I read the article by Rob Girling, and Emilia Palaveeva ‘Beyond the Cult of Human-Centered Design’. It revealed what was missing in the concept, what about people that are not end-users but indirectly affected by the design. The power of a design can have positive or negative consequences for those who interact with it but also those who are around it. The writers use the example of Air BnB’s business model has inadvertently led to negative consequences by making affordable housing unattainable by those who need it (Giriling and Palaveeva, 2017). Air BnB’s creative service revolutionized where travelers stayed and how owners can generate profitable revenue from properties but did not calculate the long term negative impacts for those who cannot afford to purchase a home. I found this to be alarming and I had the immediate realization that the design sprints I participated in, we had no conversations about how our ideas could impact larger issues like environmental impact or other unintended consequences.
A concept I wish we explored more was how design thinking can be used to solve the big problems as well as the small problems we face in our daily experiences. This curiosity led me to learn about IDEO partnered program, Circular Design Guide. The guide’s premise is to harness creativity to redesign the big system drivers and “…explore new ways to create sustainable, resilient, long-lasting value in the circular economy” (The Circular Design Guide). This subset of design thinking theory helped closed the gap on understanding how design thinking can positively impact not only end-users but create sustainable and positive long-term secondary impacts too. I was never asked to consider this when I participated in design sprints. I wish the design sprint facilitator asked this of us and I hope future design thinking students ask how their designs can have hidden impacts and how might they solve them.
References:
Girling, Rob, and Emilia Palaveeva. 2017. “Beyond The Cult Of Human-Centered Design.” Fast Company. November 3. https://www.fastcompany.com/90149212/beyond-the-cult-of-human-centered-design.
Lee-Shanok, P. (2020, May 1). Condo vacancies rise, rents fall as pandemic crushes GTA’s short-term rental market | CBC News. Retrieved June 12, 2020, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/will-more-listings-fewer-renters-mean-drop-in-rent-for-condos-1.5551464
The Circular Design Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved July 09, 2020, from https://www.circulardesignguide.com/
